LiveSTRONG

Ok, I have new found respect for Lance Armstrong. He's no longer some guy who wears a yellow wrist band, is engaged to Sheryl Crow, and just happens to bike really well. Biking really well has taken on a whole new meaning...

So Jude & I finally both have our own bikes. He got his off Craigslist a couple of weeks ago and has actually been biking to school already; we just got mine today with the birthday ang-pow my parents gave me. I think Jude was more eager than me to baptize my new aluminium toy so we went trail-biking with Olivier. Mind you, this was my first serious biking experience in a long time. The last time we biked like that was around Rottnest Island off Perth four years ago.

Anyways, so off we went along the trail (ok, off they went, I was trying hard to figure out how to bike straight- I still can't understand why that was so hard for me- use my fancy brakes and gears, and not quite succeeding...) and what should happen on my first trail biking expedition and on my new bike no less? I hit a huge branch and fall. Hard. And the bike kinda landed on my chin. *Darn* And so Jude and Olivier come by to find me most unglamorously slumped in a pile of aluminium (the bike was of course unscathed, not even a scratch), wet leaves, soil, and incomprehensibly, ash.

I'm fine now- the chin still hurts a little and my right arm's a little sore, but generally ok. It was in retrospect really rather exhilirating- I know Jude had a blast :) Just give me some time to work on my coordination skills and reflex action- maybe in a month or so I'll be able to empathize more with people who would willingly put themselves in undignified tights, a funny platypus-bill looking helmet, three layers of thermal wind-proof clothes and ride in Winter.

My Trek 4500 WSD:


Jude's Gary Fisher Marlin:

Deprived childhood

It doesn't get any better than this- sixty degree weather, cloudless skies, and trees in saturated goldens, reds, and oranges I could almost believe I was in a Gauguin painting. If Ann Arbor stayed this way all year, I'd stay here for the rest of my life. But it doesn't, so... Anyways, so what was I doing at 11 in the morning when the rest of the city was probably gratefully soaking in the gorgeous blessing of this beautiful day? Stuck in front of my computer writing about the history of Head Start.

That is until a frantic knocking at my door.

Only one person knocks at my door like that in the middle of the day. My neighbor Audrey. She pokes her head in and asks breathlessly, "Hey, do you want to jump into a leaf pile with me?" And how does a person respond when she has a whole ton of schoolwork to do? She listens to the kid.

And so went a good portion of the next hour. I just stood there watching her burrow through a huge pile of leaves her mum had racked, perform stunts only a four year-old with no concept of pain would do, and allowed myself to be talked into jumping into the leaves in my PJs. Several times. Very dignified.

So there is the story of Serene Koh and how she jumped into her first leaf pile. Ever.

Here's Audrey in her element:

They came and went...

So, the whirlwind- otherwise known as my family- has come and gone. I think everyone had an awesome time- my parents now want to retire here and open a ramen shop and my sisters want to come to U-M. I have to say though that Ann Arbor was at its best for them- the colors were gorgeous, and the weather was cool enough to be just about chilly without being frigid. And my folks were also kinda let down by New York before coming here because everything was soggy and congested so Ann Arbor was literally a breath of fresh air.

Things were a little hectic at times what with juggling work and wanting to keep them company, but I think everything went well retrospectively. We manage to squeeze in an amazing amount of stuff to do considering the schedule- berry-picking, shopping, eating, celebrating my birthday, Niagra Falls, Toronto, cooking, and a full-fledge Halloween experience!

The house is a little quiet now without Sherri bustling in the kitchen and Sam traipsing about (I think deep down she thinks she's a squirrel). It was great having them here and I am a little sad that they're gone. But I'll be home in 6 weeks so that's some kind of comfort.

My favorite picture of my sisters and I:

Social Studies

Thanks to my darling little sister, Jude & I are now almost halfway towards getting the complete set of quarters from all the American states. We were trying to occupy her with something to do while we frantically caught up with work after the weekend in Toronto; so the poor girl was duped by her dear brother-in-law into going through our massive coin collection and ended up getting a crash course in American social studies. She industriously went through all our coins and actually found quarters from 22 states. And the best thing is, it did seem like she was having fun doing it! It's incredible what apparently trvial activities can engender so much joy in kids (oops, I meant pre-adoloscents. She's twelve remember?...) So anyways, here's the list:

1) Rhode Island
2) New York
3) Ohio
4) Georgia
5) Delaware
6) Massachusetts
7) California
8) Pennsylvania
9) Louisiana
10) Vermont
11) Indiana
12) New Hampshire
13) Kentucky
14) Wisconsin
15) Florida
16) Maryland
17) Virginia
18) Missouri
19) Illinois
20) S. Carolina
21) Minnesota
22) New Jersey

Great job Sam!

Why life should imitate art...

On some very elemental level, this is how life should be- colorful, bouyant, and free. And in San Francisco of course... When people say "a child-like wonder", this is how I imagine it would be.

Just lovely.

[click picture for high-res video- it'll take a while and you need Quick Time 7. But trust me, it's oh so worth it... This is the low-res version.]

Check this site out for more info on the video clip.

Jude Yew: Concert Photographer Extra-ordinaire!!!

Here's a set of my artfully taken concert photos:

Yup, that's Bono 10/25/2005

U2 10/25/2005

Death Cab for Cutie 10/14/2005

Wilco 10/10/2004

Camera: Sony-Ericsson T610
Exposure: As long as I could hold my hand up in the crowd
Aperture: f/????
Focal Length: infinity
Flash: Available Stage Lights

I've lost my voice and my heart.

I've sacrificed it on the altar of Bono and the Greatness of U2. My trachea strained and stretched as my soul sang for 3 hours along with a man whose presence cannot be captured in words, my awe at the magic that is The Edge, and the hypnotic storm of Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton. I don't even know how I can begin to describe the experience that has forever spoiled me for all concerts to come.

"City of Blinding Lights" with the electrifying light curtains and confetti that accompanied it can only be thought of as roaring, if not seismic, and by the time they got to the pulsating "Vertigo", the words "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" were a needless countdown to a frenzied secular worship of Irish rock gods. The battle hymn "Sunday Bloody Sunday" roused the crowd to such fevered heights of adoration that when Bono asked everyone to turn on their cell phones, everyone dutifully did so, illuminating the stadium into a glorious cosmos of communality, and then promptly text messaged as requested in support of ONE.org. "Pride in the Name of Love", "I Still Haven't Found What I Was Looking For", "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Hourses" set the stage for the moving tribute to Sarejevo in "Miss Sarejevo", and when they played "One" in memory of Rosa Parks, my heart welled up so full I thought I would cry.

I won't break down the concert any further- that would be wrong. You had to be there, to bask in the wholeness of the experience, inundate your senses with the sight, sound and soul that is U2's greatness. You had to be there to see them and hear them for yourself, raise you arms and voices to the rousing anthem of their message. It truly was an almost religious experience. And I've been made a believer.

BAD
If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I'd lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

If you should ask then maybe they'd
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go...

This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go

And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

Music snobbery and mix tapes in relationships!

I came aross this article, "Who do you love?" on Tiny Mix Tapes and found it hilarious and somewhat true. Finding out the music tastes of someone you were dating was somehow really important back when you were younger. We all know now that's it's not that important but it's fun to think back about back then when you met someone new and your first question was 'Uh ... so ... what kinds of bands do you listen to ..." Why you may ask would someone base an entire relationship on a music collection? Well, as articulated in the article "Simple. Your taste in music is important. Your special love interest's taste in music is doubly so." :)

The author does offer some salvation though ... in the guise of a mix tape. Mix tapes are a sort of middle ground where you can offer the object of your affection some connection with your favorite music. Mix tapes become grounds on which shared catalogues of music are based on in the future. Listening to someone else's mixtape gives you insight into what they are thinking about, it's an obtuse form of signalling. I can't even begin to tell you how much mix tapes matter and what effort and art is required to create the perfect mix tape. Nick Hornby offers some perspective on this in his book High Fidelity,

"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules."

Do people even make mix tapes anymore? Wait ... I forgot ... it's now called an itunes personal playlist or a podcast :)

BTW, there's an entire sub-culture devoted to the mixtape, check out these links:

Thurston Moore's Book on mixtapes "Introduction to Mixtape: The Art of Cassette Culture"

A web community , The Art of the Mix, where you can upload and listen to playlists that have been submitted.

Nouveau Retro Chic

What I would get if I had $15, 000.



ELP's laser turntable plays warped records, scratched records, and even records snapped in two.

Old technologies don't die, they just upgrade.

Countdown III

I had a hard time sleeping last night- was entertaining morbid thoughts of planes self-combusting, shoe bombs, poisoned airplane food (airplane food *is* kinda toxic no? c'mon, rock-hard scrambled eggs??), and sociopathic homicidal flight attendants.

BUT, I have just spoken to my family- they've landed safely in New York and are now hermeneutically* ensconced in a rambunctious yellow cab ripping through some NYC freeway at breakneck speed on a cloudy and rainy Saturday. Terrific, and here I was getting all worried for nothing...

*oops, I meant "hermetically"- thanks Allison, and your trusty yourDictionary.com :)

Countdown II and Cows

The next time I hear from my family, we'll be in the same timezone!

And on a totally different note, this is courtesy of Jude: I Am Cow by the Arrogant Worms from Canada. Imagine yourself in a bovine cathedral as you listen (or a sweeping Disney animated movie). Here are the lyrics for greater insight. Trust me, it's a potentially transcendental experience...

Countdown

Ok, so here goes...

• 72 hour and 15 minutes till my parents and sisters arrive on American soil
  
• 155 hours and 15 minutes to the U2 concert
  
• 159 hours and 45 minutes to my 29th birthday
  
• 173 hours and 45 minutes till my family arrives in Ann Arbor
  
• 237 hours till we leave for Niagara Falls for the weekend together
  

You go do the Math. Me, until the U2 concert on Tuesday, I'll be that person with her head between the congressional testimonies collection in the archives library, her nose in Meira Levinson's The Demands of Liberal Education, an eye towards my quasi-experimental design textbook, and some other bodily appendage hanging onto my Pilot V5 Extra Fine pen scrawling incomprehensibly on the pages of my history and policymaking notebook. Oh, and I have two lectures to prepare. Which might mean I probably would also only have had an average of 4 hours of sleep a night.

But it would be so worth it :)

Peter Pumpkinhead

So, this post is not meant as a paen to the Crash Test Dummies (nor did we really name our pumpkin Peter...), but to commemorate our very first pumpkin carving experience. Today was a big game for Michigan (which we eventually won over Penn State- finally!...) and the pumpkin carving thing was an attempt at a theme tailgate. So instead of beer, we had apple cider with malt and rum, and instead of your regular tailgate staples, we had orange-colored candy, candy corn, apple cake, cream puffs and chocolate cupcakes- in other words, more Halloween than football comfort food.

Anyways, it was great fun- there're more photos on Flickr. I saw a picture in a book yesterday and got the idea of tilting the pumpkin on its side and using the stem as a snout of sorts for our carving instead of the regular stem-on-top Jack-O-Lantern. Supposed to make it appear more human-like. I dunno, I think it kinda works even though our carving ended up looking sort of astonished more than anything else- I call it the "huh-what's-going-on-dude?" expression.



I also think it looks more scared than scary. Then our friend Dan put things in true Halloween perspective- wouldn't it be more important to then ask, what is it scared about? Now that's creepy...

Boo.

eBay Humour

Who knew that there would be a day when eBay posts would garner over 500,000 hits after the item was sold. You have to read this ad for yourself to believe. I came across this delightful find via apophenia about some guy who is trying to sell his leather pants. He titled the ad "DKNY Men's Leather pants I unfortunately own". The author of that ad kept up his deadpan humour in his answers to the various questions that people posted on his ad. The pants were finally sold in Sept 2005 for $102!!! And for some reason, eBay is keeping his ad up! He even has a blog that's worth a read!

Death Cab for Cutie

It was a concert defined by the encore. Had the set ended with the jaunty The Sound of Settling, I would have been satisfied, but not ecstatic. It would have been a good concert, but not a great one. There were all the gems from their earlier album, but also some of the duds from the new one. But the encore made all the difference.

Ben Gibbard came back on his own for a gorgeous acoustic rendition of my favorite track from Plans, I Will Follow You Into the Dark, which got everyone either dead silent in a trance, or singing almost religiously along. But the piece that sealed it for the band was Transatlanticism. No question. During the opening chords, the theatre first burst out into rousing cheer, and then in moments, everyone was kinda stunned into an almost reverent silence. One of the best-written songs in years, and undoubtedly Death Cab's defining track, I smiled to myself when the girl behind me gushed to the opening strains of the song, "Oh my god- 7 minutes of pure bliss..." The sound clip does no justice whatsoever to the almost epic anthem. It harks back to a time before Death Cab was co-opted by the O.C. and before it converted an entire generation of Juicy and Abercrombie&Fitch-wearing teenagers to geek chic music. Transatlanticism- the best of Death Cab for Cutie.

Transatlanticism
The Atlantic was born today and i'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer [x8]

[instrumental break]

I need you so much closer [x4]
So come on, come on [x4]

Believe it or not...

I can bake!!

Okay, so I cheated and used prepared crust instead of making it from scratch, but that would probably have been asking too much of myself. There is no shame in being an insecure baker.

This pear pie recipe is from my friend Linda whose chocolate chip cookies are downright scrumptious, and I mean "rob-a-grandma-shove-a-Girl-Scout" scrumptious... So I was kinda surprised when she offered this recipe to me- like hello? Did I not tell you about my fiasco with the granola bars/ chunks/ crumbs? What would possess anyone to think that a person who could screw up putting together ready-made ingredients would be able to deal with raw eggs and flour? Her disarming faith in my inadequacy was so misplaced I was almost moved.

But I do like pears- much more fragrant than apples, and less tart in general, and I've never had a pear pie before. One of our favorite desserts is the decadent poached pear with warm chocolate pudding from Tamade in Singapore (which Jude surprised me with for a birthday picnic a few years back. I was thrilled of course- it's so easy to please me when it comes to food...) Anyways, so here I am, finally on Fall Break, and what better way to celebrate the first day of reprieve than to slug a blow to my ego? Let's try Linda's pear pie! I don't think it's her own recipe- she said she got it off a show or something, and it really IS very easy. I improvised it a little by using two varieties of pears. The recipe calls for half a dozen Bartlett pears, but I used a couple of Bosc pears too. Bartletts are crunchy I think, and Boscs a little more tender, so I figured using them both might be kinda of interesting. So here's the recipe:

1 unbaked prepared pie shell
5 to 6 large Bartlett pears to fill pie shell, peeled, cored, and sliced (or 3 Bartletts and 3 Boscs)
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
4 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

1) Preheat the oven to 375F degrees.
2) Fill the pie shell with the pear slices. I alternated each layer with the different pears.
3) Beat together the sugar, butter, flour and eggs. Pour over the pears.
4) Place the pie on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
5) Reduce the oven temperature to 350F and bake 1 hour.
6) Cover the edges with foil to prevent over browning during the last half hour of cooking time. Serve warm.

Trust me, it really is idiot-proof. Check it out...



It was wonderful... almost brought a tear to my eye (yes, yes, it's been a rather emotional week...) Cooked pears have an almost alcoholic fragrance which goes really well with that faint scent of vanilla (the house smells great now by the way). It isn't as pretty as the ones you get at the store, but if anyone asks, I was going for the rustic look all along... *grin*

Jude's first slice (yes, he had two!)...



It looks kinda squishy around the edges but that's just the custard which turned out surprisingly well. I was afraid I added too much flour, but it was just nice. Bound the pears together perfectly. And I was right about using two types of pears- the filling was soft, with just a little bite. I think the key is slicing them thin.

Ok, that's it, I astound myself- they might be hope for me afterall... Betty Crocker, eat my dust!

Creature Comforts

Noooooo! Say it isn't so! Visited Stan's blog only to see this article, and my heart then proceeded to break into a million little wallaces and gromits... Aardman Animation's warehouse in Bristol burned to the ground this morning and with it, all the original sketches, storyboards and figurines of my beloved Aardman characters. I literally let out an audible intake of breath followed by what must have sounded like a semi-shriek meets a dismayed moan...

These are some of the loveliest creations of animated art, and have made me smile in a way only few others have- Hayao Miyazaki and Tim Burton come closest. Even the characters of Pixar, while wonderful, like A. O. Scott said in his review, lack a certain depth.

I am sad.

I'll be counting sheep tonight as I fall asleep, Aardman sheep...

Puppy love

[click on Gromit for movie review]

Apart from our friends Dave & Jen's three-legged dog, Maggie and my sister's stuffed toy puppy, Angel (which she's had since she was 7 and who we must of course believe has a life of its own independent of her), this is my favorite dog in the whole world, and has been for the past ten years, ever since A Close Shave. Even better than Snoopy.

'Cause unlike Snoopy, Gromit would make me a pot of tea.

"...you might compare Gromit to Shrek, who has the genetic advantages of Mike Myers's Scots burr, a bevy of celebrity-voiced sidekicks and rivals, and state-of-the-art computer-animation technology. Good for him. But Gromit, made by hand and animated by a painstaking stop-motion process, has something Shrek will never acquire in a hundred sequels: a soul."
- A. O. Scott, New York Times

An American Tale II

So, a follow-up to Monday’s class:
I came home today to an email from the student whose grandfather’s immigration records came up on the Ellis Island website. This is what she wrote:

Dear Serene,
I told my father what activities we did in class - dealing with family history moving to America and what was on the Ellis Island website. He was so happy he started to cry. He was not only happy that you looked up his father, but also that I was able to tell the story of my grandparents in class. It was an interesting conversation because then we talked about how my grandma came to America through Cuba (which I forgot). And then how she lived in America illegally - and one of her family members here turned her in to the authorities. They were going to send her back to Armenia, but the senator stepped in and kept her here because she had been living in America for 15 years.

Thank you for everything,
S

I think I’m going to start to cry…

An American Tale

I had a good class today. Not that I’ve been having bad classes these past Mondays, it’s just that I haven’t been feeling that they were particularly inspired in any way. The class I’m teaching is a hard one to get across to students- Education in a Multicultural Society. I bring up issues of equity, race, class, and teaching children in disadvantaged areas. Most of my students grew up in suburban neighborhoods and will probably eventually teach in suburban neighborhoods, so I think they find it a little difficult to see the applicability of the course to their future teaching career. It doesn’t help that the first few lessons are on the history of American education which is even more remote. So I guess that sort of explains the rather lackluster response I’ve been getting. I don’t take it personally- I’ve come to accept it as a function of the course content.

But I think the class had a breakthrough today. We were discussing immigration and Americanization and their relationship to education in the late 19th and early 20th century. I thought it would be interesting to get my students to ask each other about their family names, how their ancestors came to this country and their ethnic extractions- basically to bring the topic closer to home so to speak. I also showed them a page on the Ellis Island website which allows you to search for people who arrived in America via Ellis Island. One girl then shared with the class about how her grandfather had fled the Turkish massacre of Armenia in the 1910s and came to this country. It was clear that it was a part of her family history that she found painful to recollect so I think the class really appreciated her opening herself up. Then we decided to see if we could find her grandfather’s immigration records through the website since she knew that he had come to Michigan from New York after arriving on Ellis Island.

And we did.

His records popped up in a second. He arrived on Ellis Island from France on May 24, 1912 onboard a ship called Le Havre and he was 26 years old. And I think that was the defining moment for the class. To see how palpably one’s past is so inextricably tied to one’s present. The girl didn’t cry or anything but she was visibly moved, and the class knew that something had changed.

Things were somehow different for the next two hours. I don’t think they suddenly liked the course any more in that split moment, or liked me any more for that matter, but I reckon they began to realize that there may be more to this course than dead men and a dead past. I take no credit for what took place today, but it was just kinda neat to have been there when someone’s defining sense of who she is gained new clarity and perspective.

Wake me up when September ends...

So it has. And October looks set to be just awesome! My favorite season will fully descend upon us in all its golden resplendence, all these luscious fruits and hearty veggies on sale at the markets, we get a Fall break to ease the doldrums of our scrambling existence, Death Cab for Cutie will be here in less than two weeks, Irish gods shall storm the Palace at Auburn Hills for what is certain to be the night of our lives on the 25th, and best of all, my family is going to be here just the day after that for a good six days.

There is nothing not to love about October...

New addition to sidebar

So Jude & I have decided to dedicate a section of our blog to the friends and family who mean so very much to us. These are either blogs or Flickr sites of the people without whom our time in Ann Arbor would have been totally insufferable, and also those because of whom we always think of home in Singapore. With regards to the latter, there's only my cousin, Terri's blog so far (which btw is awesome because she's smart & funny, and because she speaks and sometimes blogs in French so as far as I'm concerned, it's a cultural experience too) primarily because although both my sisters have blogs, one hasn't updated it in almost a year because the government's working her to the bone churning report after report on the status of our country's labor force, and the other has resolutely refused to let me share her pre-pubescent angst with the rest of world. She loves Billy Martin, that's all you need to know.

We figured it's a good way for those of you who read our blog to 1) also read the blogs of friends you were on the verge of losing contact with and can now revive links, and 2) visit the sites of people you may not know, and in the process, make new contacts. Either way, it's a win-win situation- everyone will love everyone else, the world will be a happier place, global warming will be averted, and the dolphins will be saved. There you go- Q.E.D.

*[Hmm... so someone just informed us that those of you using Internet Explorer actually see the entire sidebar at the bottom of the page instead of next to the posts. I'm not sure how to fix that except suggest that you use Netscape, Firefox or Safari instead. It works fine with those browsers and they're more user-friendly to begin with anyway.]

Dancing around the world

This video is hilarious. Via JeffTang :) Someday I hope that we can do this.

G' day mate!

[With edited sound links]

Architecture in Helsinki- one of the best things to come out of Australia since Naomi Watts, Mambo, and kangaroos (ok, maybe koalas too). An 8-member band based out of Melbourne, these guys are part Polyphonic Spree, part Arcade Fire, plus '80s electronic pop meets Of Montreal- kitchen-sink pop, if you will. And that's the best thing about them- you can't pigeon-hole them. They don't have a sound. With eight people armed with a huge variety of instruments (I think they might be a sitar thrown in somewhere) and all contributing their vocals in one way or another, each track in the album is a surprise- from random off-key yelling to military chants to balladic crooning (sometimes all in one track- see In Case We Die, Parts 1-4). And the best thing is, it all works brilliantly! AIH is rambunctious, delirious and frenetic, as if someone (or all of them) have had one too many triple expressos.

Check out in particular Wishbone, Maybe You Can Owe Me and The Cemetary. Like Alice, you'll find yourself falling down into Wonderland where strange colors (yes, you will hear colors), sounds and sights thrash and swirl into psychedelic euphoria.

Do The Whirlwind
She said you'd given up,
Your folks told me you should be left alone,
On a mountain top knocking the aeroplanes down with stones.

Do the whirlwind and carry the hope that stings all night long,
Don't abandom him 'cause he quivers when he hears your song,
Believe me, it's safe to see.

At least be confused about right and wrong,
Plan to settle down,
Over the moon under the sun.

Do the whirlwind and shotgun the seat that beats
Hanging on to the one you love
To keep keepin', sleepin', dreamin' on.

Folks given up under the quivers and lines,
You do the whirlwind,
Don't abandon,
Get a handle of yourself, son.

New love

So- my latest breakfast crush- Yogurt Burst Cheerios! I've been completely infatuated with Honey Nut Cheerios for the longest time, but alas, at $4.89 for a small box, it was mostly an unrequited adoration from afar... Yogurt Burst on the other hand- so thoughtfully at a promotional price of $2.50- set my heart aflutter with desire. It had me at "on sale"... With less sugar (and made of wholesome wheat as every member of the Cheerios clan is), it's also literally better for your health, or so it amorously declares.

I think my early morning gastronomic hearstrings are being slowly wooed over by the more subtle allure of this new love...

*Crunch crunch*

Ha!

Woo-hoo! I get to keep this template! Everybody knew I was so rooting for the new one anyway- the poll was just my diabolical attempt to publicly legitimize my personal agenda... Anyways, on last count, we have twelve "aye"s and only two semi-"nay"s (my dad who says it's a little TOO clean, but still likes it anyway; and our guitar-and-theremin-making friend who thinks the background should be a color other than white- I tried, it doesn't work...)

So it'll be this floral motif for a while, at least until September 13 2006. In case people are wondering where I got the template, I've credited the designer in the sidebar. It's from francey.org, where I also got the Arcade Fire one. She has some really awesome stuff- there's a Royal Tennebaums template that I was very tempted to try out, and also one inspired by Of Montreal. And of course I still love the moths and train of the Arcade Fire design...

And just a coming attractions shout-out, look out for Jude's post tomorrow on the Sigur Ros concert he's at right now (pronounced Si-ur Rose- the "i" is like the "i" in "hit", silent "g" and "rose" is said very quickly- I got this from their website). The whole town is buzzing and there're kids sulking forlornly outside the theatre because it's sold out (they were sold out a couple of days after the tickets went on sale. We got them the day of man...) I was supposed to go, but am still stuck in the computer lab churning out a paper due at 10 in the morning.

Thank god for Chris.

It's all Jen's fault...

Great, just what we need right now- something else to distract us from work. It's not enough that we Flickr-surf, Jen just introduced us to YouTube, a Flickr-like website, but for videos. You have NO idea how funny it is, and what a complete and utter time-suck! We're hooked.

Look out in particular for two Chinese dudes who lip-sync to pop music in their dorm rooms (their video on the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way" is stratospheric...), and John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman (complete with the cast of Monty Python singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Death" at the end) is poignantly hilarious, if there's ever such a thing.

Bring out the popcorn and soda! but don't say we didn't warn you...

What does it mean to be Singaporean?

In a bid to extend the theme of national pride and identity today...

Stir-fried kangkong with dried shrimp, garlic, chilli padi and... ma po tofu sauce. We had no sambal belacan...


Indian fish curry. Again, a substitution was in order- no fish head, so we used a salmon fillet. Muthu would be outraged...

Singapore & Katrina

I suppose this is an intriguing take on our country. It's always a little strange to read about how others think of you...

Singapore and Katrina- New York Times (14 Sep 2005)

Anniversary Poll

So... ghetto of our mind is officially a year old today! And I thought to commemorate the event by uploading a new template. Hopefully this one will not be as short-lived as the Arcade Fire one. I've tried to make sure that the images are securely hosted so nothing disappears like the last time. Cross your fingers... This template's way more feminine than the polka dots of the old, but I think also alot cleaner so to speak- clearer, less things going on. Scroll all the way down to the end; there's a pretty design at the bottom that few templates have.

Anyways, maintaining this blog has been a wonderful way to keep in touch with friends and family, and also to share with you our thoughts and experiences (often mundane and inconsequential we apologize, although we do have our days, like yesterday...). We really appreciate the comments and messages you leave, and they never fail to remind us of how much we're loved and how often we're thought of. Thanks guys!

Also, just to add some fun to the festivities (yes, yes, Jude & I are of course throwing a birthday party for the blog- balloons, party hats and cake, plus a pinata thrown in just in case people didn't know it was a birthday party...), I thought to take a poll on the new template. I'll leave it on for a week or so and then depending on whether people think this looks good or if they'd rather the old one back, I'll fix it next week. Do leave a comment or a message on the tag-board and we'll find out next Tuesday if this stays or not.

This should be fun!

Salman Rushdie

This was probably the most surreal experience I've had in a while. I thought meeting Nick Hornby was awesome enough, but no, clearly the Fates had more in store for my beating literary heart. I got to meet Salman Rushdie. No, let me clarify that, I got to speak to Salman Rushdie, and better still, he spoke back.

He was doing a reading at Borders today and both Jude & I had been looking forward to it for a while. He's smaller than I'd expected- I'd always imagined him to be an imposing figure for some reason. But how wonderful it is to realize that someone you've admired for a large part of your adult life is at the end of the day just human like you- literary legend or not. He was wonderfully affable, funny, and in the spirit of proper Englishness, incredibly eloquent. He read from his new book Shalimar the Clown which sounds pretty good judging from what must be the choice bits he picked to read.

So anyway, here I was sitting practically at the man's feet (yes, people worship rock stars, I stalk writers...) but totally out of his line of vision, but I hazarded to raise my hand during the Q & A anyway, and voila! he says, "Yes, the lady in the corner?" I was so flabbergasted I almost forgot my question! But promptly regained my composure and asked about which of his books was a favorite to write. If I had more of my wits about me, I'm sure I could have formulated something more eloquent like how everyone almost always touts "Midnight's Children" as his best work, or "The Satanic Verses" which gained him the greatest fame (or notoriety depending on how you look at it); and about how I disagree because I personally adore Shame. So I wanted to know if he agreed with the conventional assessment, or if he had his own personal favorite. Clearly, I didn't have all my wits about me, and was gushing like a schoolgirl (ok, not gushing, but really, the question sounded infinitely more sophisticated and intelligent in my head...) so it kind of came out rather prosaic, but I think I got my point across.

He said that one always feels closest to the most recent work because it's most intimately related to the psyche you're inhabiting at the moment. The Salman Rushdie who wrote "Midnight's Children" is considerably younger than the Salman Rushdie today and for that reason, the novel is a little harder for him to identify with now. But if he had to choose one of his books, it would be Haroun the Sea of Stories, a children' book he wrote for his son. His response also involved an encounter with a Jewish German children's publisher which he recounted in a hilarious accent that was terrific! And all that time he was responding to ME! Imagine that! I thought my heart would just stop beating...

Eastern Market

So we finally made it to Eastern Market today. We've been trying to make a trip there all summer but something always got in our way, one of which was a burning car on I-96 which distracted us and made us miss our exit... Anyways, it was a great expedition today- I love markets of all sorts- wet, dry, super, flea... The colors, the sounds, the smells (that of live poultry nonwithstanding...)- it was an absolute blast! And the bargains! Our treasures today:
1) A pound of portabello mushrooms: $3
2) A bunch of fresh basil: $1
3) A pound of red baby potatoes: $1
4) A generous piece of young ginger: 90 cents
5) 2 pounds of Concord grapes that Jude's been lusting over since we saw them at Whole Foods (where they were going for $6.99/lb!): $2(!!!!) These grapes are in a league of their own I tell you. They're perfectly round, a deep purple- almost black, bursting with sweet nectar, and have the most amazing texture, like a cross between a mangosteen and regular grapes. I'm not sure if you can find them easily at regular stores because they're meant more for jellies, juices and wines rather than table consumption. But if you can, trust me... it's sheer ambrosia.
6) A big bunch of kangkong: $1. They call it water convolvulus here, or water spinach. Jude & I love this! Fried with dried shrimp and sambal- oooh....
7) A bouquet of riotous mixed blooms: $4
8) Half a pound of scotch bonnet peppers: $1 (they're supposed to be the hottest peppers around. I'm going to make beef stew with them tomorrow. We'll see...)
9) 4 pieces of fried chicken that we brought home for dinner: $2.10 (plus tax). Can you beat that? We made a quick salad and opened a can of soup- which I think cost more than the four pieces of chicken- and that filled us up just nice. It takes the cake as the single most value-for-money meal we've had since we stepped foot in this country.
10) A small cannoli and a hunk of a slice of German chocolate cake: $1.59! (I rest my case...)
11) An awesome time with the Cooks and Cooneys: priceless...

Who says good comedy is dead?

Once again, there is hope for intelligent, incisive and empathetic humor.

[Click picture for video: "Meet the F**kers: A New Breed of Public Servants"- this takes a while...]


[Click picture for link. "Hurricane Katrina is George Bush's Monica Lewinsky"]

Full of Grace

More than enough has been said about how the response to Hurricane Katrina exposes the blistering sclerosis that has infected the American fabric of life- the race issue, class tensions, the irony and shame that a first-world country falters in the face of diasaster other dispossessed nations confront on a daily basis. But hopefully the time for healing is upon us as the water recedes and people are moved to safer, drier ground.

Michigan is not only one of the states to which refugees from the Gulf Coast have been transported, the Graduate School here at U of M is also one of the universities accepting students displaced from their own who are now eager to restart their graduate studies. I guess it's gestures like these- mandated or otherwise- that remind us that while catastrophes are ripe circumstances for transgression, they also provide opportunities for revelations of grace.

Speaking of displacement and education, here's an article from today's New York Times which quotes my advisor, Prof. Jeffrey Mirel, on the resettling of children in other school districts for the new term.

If you want to send care packages to the people in the Astrodome, they now have their own address:
"Donated Goods"
Astrodome
Houston TX 77230

Every woman should have ...

1) one old love she can imagine going back to...
2) and one who reminds her how far she has come;
3) enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to;
4) something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour;
5) a youth she's content to leave behind...
6) a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it in her old age;
7) a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra;
8) one friend who always makes her laugh...
9) and one who lets her cry;
10) a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family;
11) eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored;
12) a feeling of control over her destiny.

Every woman should know...
1) how to fall in love without losing herself;
2) how to quit a job, break up with a lover, and confront a friend without ruining the friendship;
3) when to try harder...
4) and when to walk away;
5) that she can't change the length of her calves, the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents;
6) that her childhood may not have been perfect... but its over;
7) what she would and wouldn't do for love or more;
8) how to live alone, even if she doesn't like it;
9) whom she can trust, whom she can't, and why she shouldn't take it personally;
10) where to go- be it to her best friend's kitchen table, or a charming inn in the woods when her soul needs soothing;
11) what she can and can't accomplish in a day... a month...and a year.

Stumbled upon this list my best friend sent me years ago. Maybe it's age, or perhaps it's the coming of Fall (or the fact that it's 1.30 in the morning, Jude's asleep, there's nothing good on TV, and I'm too tired to read but too awake to sleep) which nudges one towards a quiet brand of pensiveness. Taking stock of the twentysomething years of my conscious life (I doubt I should be held accountable for the early years of my existence where even basic ingestion was beyond my own free will), of the twenty-five things, I'm blessed (or so I hope) to admit to fifteen of them. That's not a bad record I suppose- good to know the first twenty-nine years of my life have been rich in its own ways, and even better to know that there's yet more in my life to learn and live.

Our new Death Cab for Cutie poster

The new album isn't as great as their previous efforts, but there are gems:

I Will Follow You Into the Dark
Love of mine some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the No's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black
And I held my toungue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the No's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes
Are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
Cause we'll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the No's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

High & Dry

We visited...
1) the south of Florida where hardly anyone spoke English ("Hablar Español?")
2) the north of Florida where hardly anyone spoke English ("Ken aye 'git y'all folks any-thang tuh-daay?")
3) the oldest city in America, St. Augustine. Yes, despite popular belief, the nation's oldest city is not Plymouth Rock or Jamestown, but down South in Florida, established as a Spanish settlement in 1565.

We ate...
1) more shrimp than I dare to admit. There had better not be some health advisory warning about the amount of shrimp intake a day...
2) amazing Cuban food at Puerto Sagua in Miami. I had NO idea pork could taste so good. And the coffee, oh the coffee...

We got...
1) more swimming in a week than we ever had. Between the beaches we visited and the pool on the farm- we were water babies like never before. Which leads me to...
2) more tan than I think my body needs. The last time I got a tan this bad, it was February 2003. I had to hide the tan lines at our wedding in June. That's how bad I tan. I'm now a strange hue between toast and roast, and I swear it's going to stay till Christmas...

We bought...
...surprisingly little for a week-long trip.
1) A T-shirt for Jude from a record store in Miami;
2) An angora hat from the Orlando airport (duly christened my "Dorothy Parker hat");
3) A tiny young lime tree for our neighbor who helped us plant-sit while we were gone. They look better now than they ever did with me. *Darn*
4) Alot of gas, and at an average of $2.69/ gallon, that's not funny. I'm just glad we're not there this week.

We decided...
1) after graduation, we should just move to St. Augustine and teach at one of the most beautiful colleges in the country, Flagler College. Imagine a college which has a building that was once one of the oldest hotels in the country, whose cafeteria is surrounded by priceless Tiffany windows worth millions of dollars, and a location by the river as if you were living in Monaco.
2) we never want to retire in Ocala. Bleed us dry first...

We took...
... too many photos to fit in Flickr. So here are just some.

Storm chasers

We're back in Ocala- safe and dry. What was initially Tropical Storm Katrina became an intense Category One hurricane as of two hours ago and reached landfall eight hours ahead of schedule. We literally escaped the eye of the storm.

A picture we took of Miami Beach when we were there yesterday.


How it looked like a couple of hours ago. Courtesy of weather.com.

Eye of the storm

Talk about being in the heart of things- here I am sitting at the lobby of the Winterhaven Hotel on South Beach, Miami, just meters away from the Atlantic Ocean watching the storm clouds of Tropical Storm Katrina come our way. She should hit landfall by tomorrow, but we'll be back in the safe confines of our aunt's farm by then. We're leaving South Florida by mid-day and should miss the storm by a long shot. No Key West for us though- you try driving through an open-water highway in a storm- and that's a bummer, but we got a great day at the beach yesterday and it was gorgeous.

I'll update once we get back to Ocala- wish us luck escaping the storm!

"Una taza de café por favor."

We'll be off to Florida tomorrow for a week to visit Jude's aunt and uncle in Ocala. I know, no one knows where or what it is. It's a little town two hours north of Orlando known for horse farms and little else. It's kinda of a strange place- not quite rural, but too rural to be suburban, wealthy because of the horse farms, but with pockets of ghetto redneck areas, and a generic EveryAmericanTownCenter with its huge Barnes & Noble (with in-house Starbucks of course) and JC Penny-esque department store (kinda like every Singaporean neighborhood central with a Giordano, U2 and Bread Talk). We never quite do anything when we're there. A day comprises of waking up early to wash the horses, feed them and hitch them on a buggy to ride. Then you sit at home out of the heat and humidity for the rest of the day with an afternoon nap, a book and hopefully cable TV. The day crawls by without you seeing another human being. I like it because it's really quite relaxing, but if I have to stay there for more than a week, I think I'll slit my wrist or asphyxiate myself in horse feed. The Florida where nothing ever happens.

Then there's the other Florida where everything happens, where every other person you see speaks Spanish, where no one is a native Floridan, and the only place in this country where it's mandatory that men are greasy, gleaming and strut around in white shirts with white pants and white shoes. Miami and everything else south. We'll be spending a day in Miami and then driving down Highway One through the Florida Keys all the way to Key West. This is of course the lousiest time in the year to be in Florida when the heat and humidity are at their absolute highest, but as long as there is seafood, beaches and blue water, I don't care. And then there's Cuban coffee.

Goodbye

That's it, I give up. I cannot bake. I wasn't even going for anything complex like a chocolate ganache torte or whatever it is that Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver make with such ease and panache. It was just granola bars for crying out loud... They turned out more like granola chunks. I can't believe I could screw up what has got to be the world's easiest recipe- just heat butter, honey, brown sugar and vanilla in a pot, and mix with granola. Bake for 25 minutes. They looked fine when I took them out of the oven- smelled great even- but then I tried cutting them up into bars and it was all downhill from there. I lost about a third of it to crumbs... Tasty, but ugly as hell.



I'm just going to stop trying altogether.

The granola things were (still are) meant for Jeff who's taking a week-long road trip back to California tomorrow. I was planning on putting the granola bars into a container for him as an easy snack on the road, but now I'm thinking I might have to throw a spoon in for him to scoop the crumbs out instead... So much for easy. Anyways, Jude's also burning him a road-trip CD with some of our favorite driving songs and some artistes we know Jeff likes like Stevie Nicks, just to ease the tedium of Iowa, Wyoming and Utah. Then he hits Vegas, and Jude & Serene's Road Trip CD will be the last thing on the man's mind...

Broken Flowers

So I'm sitting there looking at Bill Murray in Broken Flowers and trying to find traces of the man who once battled the giant Marshmallow Man with a Proton Pack and a Ghost Trap; as he sits there in his now signature position of indifferent resignation (legs slightly apart, fingers entwined and loosely hanging, shoulders slouched in some kind of existential defeat- pioneered in Lost in Translation, now perfected in Broken Flowers), I'm thinking, where is that almost deranged physical comic who drove Richard Dreyfuss (and me) to the brink of madness in What About Bob? He's gone, I swear. We saw a little of the 21st century Bill Murray in Rushmore, but I think with the triptych of Lost in Translation, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Broken Flowers, Bill Murray the comic has been laid to rest, and Bill Murray the actor has been born.

I can't think of another actor who can do awkwardness, who thrives on awkwardness almost. How do you even act awkward? If you're Bill Murray you don't act, you exude. Everything from how he never seems comfortable anywhere (he sleeps fitfully on his couch, with an ex-lover, in various motel beds, on an airplane, but never soundly), his eyes dance furtively, defensively almost, but with so much emotion, and he just generally seems ill at ease with his surroundings, other people, and even in his own skin. And therein lies the heart of Broken Flowers- one man awkwardly searching for an answer to a question he doesn't want answered.

Jude says the movie's like High Fidelity for the over-55 set. I agree, with a road trip and six pink bouquets thrown in for good measure. I enjoyed it, mostly because of Bill Murray as the perpetually baleful Don (whose one particularly wrenching scene in a cemetery should nab him an Oscar nomination if nothing else...), but also because of the actresses who play all his ex-lovers. Sharon Stone is a hoot for her brassiness, and Jude almost couldn't recognize Frances Conroy as the mum in Six Feet Under. My favorite is the exquisitely belligerent Tilda Swinton whose smouldering anger was such a refreshing change from the almost beatific Angel Gabriel in Constantine and the White Witch in the upcoming Chronicles of Narnia. The audiences' encounters with all of them are lovingly crafted, but so short-lived. It's almost like you want to invite them all to a cup of coffe, sit down, and get to know them a little better, like Don did...

And one can't help but appreciate Jim Jarmusch's nuanced, almost quiet direction (although this does dawn upon you only a while later after the credits roll). There are no obvious emotions or huge confrontations, no earthshattering confessions or revelations. Broken Flowers doesn't answer questions nor ties things up in a neat pretty bow, and for a movie that has a mystery as a premise, that can be uncomfortable. But such is life no? There will be loose ends flapping in the wind and questions echoing unanswered.

But there will also always be flowers to be offered.

Flying Cats!

I know that there are a lot of you cat fans out there. You should see the photos this guy has taken with his 2 cats. A la Matrix!

Flying Cats by Junku

/jude

Sodom and Gomorrah

Just watched Sin City. God it was awesome...

Dwight: She doesn't quite chop his head off. She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.

No, we didn't have fried chicken.

Until two days ago, I'd never gone camping- EVER; I'd never rock-climbed, not even at the gym; and I'd never had salami and chips together for breakfast. Well as of today, been there, done that. Not successfully on all counts of course- the salami and chips in particular didn't go down too well with my digestive system...

Finally let myself be persuaded to go on a rock climbing/ hiking trip to Kentucky (my husband can be VERY persistent...). The thing that's always bugged me about going camping is the shower, or the lack thereof. Ok, so I'm neurotic when it comes to being clean- both myself, and the environment around me. So you can see how sleeping in a tent with little to no access to fresh water in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky was a potentially problematic prospect. But in the end everything worked out. The camp ground we pitched at had a shower facility (5 minutes for a dollar which amazingly is more than enough time), and I slept miraculously well on just a foam mat sans sheets nor pillow. So there was lunch on Saturday when we had to eat on-site with our hands after climbing and I had chalk and balm and goodness knows what else on my hands (bug remains probably), but you give in to the hunger and the sheer exhaustion, and dirty fingers become the last thing on your mind.

On the whole, it was good healthy fun. The experience was kind of exhilirating actually even though I wouldn't recommend plunging headlong into it without having been to the rock-climbing gym first. That part was a little nerve-wrecking for me. But you get over it after a while especially when you know that the people with you are not only seasoned rock-climbers, but your good friends too. A whole ton of trust and faith is involved- in your own strength, as well in the people supporting you, so being with great company really helps. Neither Jude nor I made it completely up the main crag but just being halfway up was kind of awesome. Painful, but in a good way... Rock-climbing takes strength and agility, but also a little courage and psychological tenacity. I kept giving up at this one level and the thing is, once your mind is convinced you can't move beyond that, your body isn't likely to push itself to try either. It's a lot of discipline- physical and psychological, something I sorely need to work on.

Jude and I went hiking while the rest of them climbed on and it was gorgeous. Wildflowers everywhere, plants of every conceivable shade of green, and voracious bugs that teemed with an exuberance so unfettered I was mildy envious. I know little else about Kentucky except for fried chicken and the Derby, so being there and basking in its rugged beauty was an interesting experience. I can't say much about the people except that they listen to music that makes me just that tad uncomfortable ("I lost my girlfriend who ran away with my brother. She took my money, my heart and my guns. She took my guns, she took my guns... Repeat to fade"), and that they look at you funny, probably coz Jude and I were likely to be the only Asians in a fifty-mile radius. Now that's scary...

Our Flickr account is maxed out for the month so the photos are on the Yahoo! site.

My best friend would be so proud of me, aren't you? ;)

For that minty fresh taste...

Nope, this isn't going to be a post about chewing gum- it's about making something from scratch for the first time with things growing literally in our backyard (and I'm not talking about escargots...). We had Jeff and Allison over for dinner yesterday and to accompany the roast lamb (for which I take no credit whatsoever- that goes to our beloved friend Joe, Trader Joe that is...), I made fresh mint sauce from the profusely growing mint plants outside our house.

1. First I pulled a handful of mint stalks to get about 2 cups of mint leaves. Those stalks look like a lot but don't add up to much once you take them apart. You also need a couple teaspoons of sugar, vinegar and lemon juice.


2. You sprinkle the sugar over the washed mint leaves and let that sit for about an hour. That's apparently supposed to counteract the initial bitterness of the mint. I love how the sugar forms a light crystalline crust over the bright green leaves. So pretty...


3. After an hour, you bunch the leaves up and chop them. See what happens after the wash and sugar have had their way with the mint. That's all 2 cups of mint leaves amount to after I chopped them up.


4. You then heat up 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. I guess you could just use vinegar but we don't have the fancy sorts like wine or apple, and just plain vinegar smells really noxious if you ask me. Lemon and mint go really well together though. Nice and fresh, like how mornings ought to smell. Which is how the kitchen (and my fingers) smelled like for a good 4 hours- lovely (the smell, not my fingers...). It took about two seconds to heat since my pot was disproportionately big for 4 tablespoons of liquid. Pour it over the mint and stir. You end up with a deep emerald mixture that doesn't quite yet taste like anything actually.

I added a wee bit of salt and some olive oil to make it a tad smoother. You have to let it sit for about 2 hours until the mint has infused the vinegar/ lemon, by which time the sauce should turn moss green.

5. This is just before Jeff and Allison arrived. To accentuate the mint theme, I thought it would be nice to put together a little arrangement with the mint flowers from the plant. They're shaped like lavender flowers, but have miniature blossoms within them.


6. Here's a close-up of the mint flower arrangement.


The final taste of the mint sauce was actually rather mild- all the aroma and freshness of the mint and lemon without the violent acridity. It worked great with the lamb which was darn tasty (it did say "Well-seasoned Bonless Leg of Lamb" on the package)- kind of added that extra layer of taste without being distracting. There was also roasted vegetables pasta and Jeff & Allison brought Spanish Breaded Tomatoes and stir-fried veggies. Jude made a refreshing summery concoction of Ribena (for the unenlightened among you, that's a blackcurrant syrup all Singaporean children- and children from former British colonies I suspect- grew up with), pomegranate soda, and soda water. We wanted to take a photo of the table after everything was put together, but the camera ran out of battery. Cest 'la vie. Give a little more love, I might make the meal again- homemade mint sauce and all...

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Long live the satirist! I don't remember the last time I laughed SOOOO hard! Jude and I were practically on the floor with tears in our eyes. This "open letter" is in response to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution (and also particularly pertinent in light of George Bush's recent support for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools).

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him...

For the full script, click here. And you must spend some time going through all the response letters from real Kansas School Board members and the pages of emails he received, most of which profess contrite conversion to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism... And best of all, this phenomenon has it's own Wikipedia entry, itself worth an invested read! The sites will be a time suck, but I guarantee it will be both a gratifying and nourishing endeavor (both mentally and gastronomically!)



I knew my almost religious affinity to carbohydrates would one day lead me to the meaning of life... I have not noodled in vain.

**Since we're on the topic of carbohydrates, here's a quote from the latest issue of TIME about Atkins Nutritionals- of The Atkins Diet fame- filing for bankruptcy:
"So it's not surprising that when Dr. Robert Atkins' 33-year-long fad diet finally came to a crashing end last week, a whole lot of us were glad. This was a guy who wanted to take away our bread. Even prisoners get bread. Bread is so basic that, unlike water, restaurants don't have the guts to charge for it. Certain foods cannot even be made without bread -- such as French toast and... bread."

Sisyphus

Yes, like the man condemned by the gods to ceaselessly push a rock up the hill, I'm feeling the futility of the search for the perfect blog template. Note to self: by the end of the year, we're not only going to find a reliable server to host all our graphics and blog related files (even if it means having to pay), we're going to learn enough HTML and Flash to design our own website (complete with professional portfolios). Enough of this fiddling around with someone else's design...

Sufjan Stevens- Come On Feel the Illinoise

This is a great follow-up album to his last one on Michigan. His music takes some patience to appreciate though, what with the song titles longer than some people's vocabulary (see "A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze"), and the many allusions to American (more specifically Illinois's) history. There are references to Frank Lloyd Wright, the United Nations, and some Polish revolutionary hero that I'm still deciphering... Still, despite the seemingly staggering scope of the album, it rewards your committment by unveiling something more spiritual and personal beneath. The track "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", about the Chicago serial killer doesn't so much remember the murderer than to remind ourselves that maybe deep down, we all fall short because we're flawed by sin.

Jude and I enjoy his stuff because he writes like a poet, his words more like narratives than lyrics. Click here for his set on Morning Becomes Eclectic. I recommend The Predatory Wasp of The Palisades is Out To Get Us! where he mourns the death of his best friend, while Jude's track of choice, Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother! is a sublime exercise in awesome rhyming (I never imagined you could write a coherent song with the words "alligator", "aviator", "debater", "emancipator" altogether.)

Another kind of party

It's been six hours and they're still at it. At this moment, there are five laptops and three desktops going at the same time in our house, all connected to our wireless network. Eight grown men who barely know each other have been reduced into intent silence and/or vague incoherence, speaking in male-bonding sub-phrases only geek gamers understand. As far as I'm concerned, it's a whole other language. A whole other dimension of existence. In the games they play, people bleed *purple* blood. I rest my case. It's an aura of sublime techdom I'm not even going to attempt to penetrate. Yes, we're having a LAN party; no, I take that back- Jude's having a LAN party. I could only take the foreign vocabulary and generally rather odd vibe for about 20 minutes before scratching the wall for some female company. ANY female company.

Thank god for Melanie and Iris. And for the laconic charm of a Dr.-Zhivago-watching-dog-loving John Cusack. On any other day, I would have hated spending $7 watching him squander his lovely talent on an otherwise lacklustre excuse of a romantic comedy. But tonight, he was my knight in shining armor, saving me from a fate worse than drinking bad coffee on a frigid winter's day. Diane Lane seemed even more luminous than usual (when I'm in my forties, I want to look just like her, crow's feet and all- talk about aging gracefully), and Christopher Plummer was just smashing reciting Yeats.

Ok, it's close to 2am, and I think people are about ready to go. The three packets of chips are almost gone (extra large Cheesy Cheddar, BBQ, and Vinegar & Onion), and I think the caffeine/ sugar from all that diet Pepsi is finally wearing off. It seems to take very little in terms of food to sustain these guys. Take it from me- sugar and MSG.

Guys, when I find another chick-flick with John Cusack in it to spend $7 on, please do come again. Either that or someone's going to have to teach me how to get that vigilante to spurt purple blood...

Four wheels good, two wheels better.

Just back from a run. The ordeal has been less painful lately, probably because I've been doing it more regularly and my body's sucked it in and given up resisting the pain I put it through. It's still a constant struggle to run harder and farther though. I figured in the long run, I can't keep running at the same pace and for the same distance. Either that or I should find a new sport to occupy myself (my best friend is so going to balk at the notion of me thinking of a SPORT to kill time. All through my school years, I've never passed any fitness test, primarily because I always failed the running segment. Ironic...). Jude and I have toyed with the idea of:
1) Tennis (not enough arm strength nor stamina, although my cousin Jill, a puny girl 16 years younger than I and school champ has offered more than once to coach me...);
2) Swimming (in this region, what are you going to do the other 6 months of the year? And I have my doubts about the sanitary conditions of the indoor pools here...);
3) Rock-climbing (it's indoors so that takes care of the weather, and the prospect of being able to climb like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2 is rather alluring, so I'm considering...); and most lately,
4) Cycling. No it's not a Lance Armstrong thing; it's more a "taking-advantage-of-the-pretty parks-in-the-area" thing. Besdies, it's also a cheap mode of transportation and you could conceivably ride in Ann Arbor till late-November.

So we've been bike-shopping- comparing prices, specs, suitability, that kind of thing. We kinda like what we saw yesterday but being the bargain-hunter that he is, my husband will stop at nothing to get the best deal, and he always does :)



What I really really want though is a zippy Vespa. They've modernized it a little without losing the retro feel and it'll be fun to have that mobility without the cost. Jude always says that in our ideal household, we ought to have a car, two bikes, and a scooter. That's provided we have stunning incomes, live in a climatically less insane area, and where fellow drivers are courteous rather than homicidal sociopaths.

Defence

All done. This might be the fastest blog recovery in history- less than an hour and everything's pretty much up and going- Tag-Board and Flickr included.

Please, whoever you are, don't do this again. I type fast and I'm not stupid. The coding is tedious but brainless, so getting things back isn't that big a deal. What disgusts me is the callous disregard for someone else's work. I may not have designed the template but someone talented out there did and this is the product of her toil. This is our blog (note POSSESSIVE pronoun)- time, thought and effort has been put into getting it to help us share of ourselves with our friends and family.

Stay away.

!!!

Believe it or not, the blog's been hacked! We lost everything except the posts and some of the graphics... As you can see, I'm repairing the damage right now... Geeez... and just when I was so proud of my HTML coding. Figures, hubris... This isn't even a celebrity blog like Xiaxue's or anything... If I find out who and how someone managed to do this, things are not going to be pretty.

I'm pissed.

New Template

So, we finally found a template we like that has a little something of the both of us. I love the the way the frothy blue plays against the assertive brown, and the contrast between the primitivism of the butterflies and the industrialism of the train is wonderfully intriguing- like getting lost in a naturalist's nightmare... Besides, since The Arcade Fire is one of Jude's favorite bands, this is perfect. We were actually toying with the idea of buying an Arcade Fire poster, but they were too expensive, so I guess having a blog that looks like one is the next best thing.

There are still some kinks I'm fiddling with (like finding out what on earth is going on with Tag-Board and how to fit in Jude's Flickr bar), but for the moment, we're happy with how this looks.

What say you?

Guess who?

Guess who's going to be home for Christmas and New Year for the first time in three years? Guess who got his conference paper accepted in Singapore and managed to wrangle the university into paying for his ticket home? Guess who learnt from their mistake and booked December air tickets in July instead of September? Guess who can't wait to do Christmas shopping with her sisters and cousins again? Guess! Guess! Guess!

2046

There was a period in my life where I firmly believed I was born in the wrong era. Had I been a woman in Pre-Raphaelite England where a full figure was revered, I would have had people write poetry about me, sculpt my likeness in alabaster, and kiss the ground I walk on. Ok, there is always the chance that I could have been born a kitchen wench, and I couldn't have voted or gone to the university, but at least I wouldn't have had to diet. So there... Call me shallow.

But now, I want to live in Singapore/ Hong Kong in the '60s. I want to dress in a Shantung cheongsam everyday. I want to paint my nails blood-red, line my eyes dramatically with kohl, and drawl on a cigarette lazily while my lover looks on with melancholic desire. I want to live in a hotel perpetually drenched in the scent of passion- both rapturous and repressed, wear three-inch heels, walking langourously as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do. I want to take a train to a place, a time where things never change and where memories are real. I want to fall in love like I was drugged. And I want Tony Leung to look at me as if I grip the madness of his soul.